China - 1st Five-Year Plan 1953-1957
The period of officially designated "transition to socialism" corresponded to China's First Five-Year Plan (1953-57). The period was characterized by efforts to achieve industrialization, collectivization of agriculture, and political centralization. The First Five-Year Plan stressed the development of heavy industry on the Soviet model. Soviet economic and technical assistance was expected to play a significant part in the implementation of the plan, and technical agreements were signed with the Soviets in 1953 and 1954. For the purpose of economic planning, the first modern census was taken in 1953; the population of mainland China was shown to be 583 million, a figure far greater than had been anticipated.
In late 1952, the CCP Central Conunittee decided to undertake long-term economic development. To be successful, economic. development in a planned economy requires the formulation of a number of well-conceived and highly interrelated policies in pursuit of a particular objective. Due to a lack of experience in economic planning, and to a lack of advanced technology, Chinese leaders had to rely heavily on foreign aid for their economic development. At that time the Soviet Union was the only country that was willing and able to provide China with economic and technical assistance. With little alternative, Chairman Mao adopted the Soviet model for China's economic development.
The principal features of the Soviet or Stalinist model are as follows: high rates of saving and investment (or "capital constructiqn" in Chinese terminology) institution~lized through agricultural collectiy~fations; heavy emphasis on the development of those industries producing r.aw materials and investment goods; reliance on large-scale and capital-intensive technology in industry; and relative neglect of investment in agriculture, in consumer goods industries. and in social overhead. This Stalinst prescription results in rapid industrial expansion at the expense of agricultural productivity and standards of living in rural areas. The First Five-Year Plan, both in its conception and execution, had all the earmarks of a Stalinist strategy of economic development.
The second session of the Second National People's Congress formally adopted the First Five-Year Plan on July 30, 1955, after one-half of the period to be covered by the plon had already passed. The fundamental tasks of the plan were to implement 156 development construction projects which were designed with Soviet assistance. Since the plan was based on the Soviet model, it stressed the industrial sector. Thus, its application to China resulted in a significant increase in Chinese industrial output and a sluggishness of Chinese agricultural output.
Among China's most pressing needs in the early 1950s were food for its burgeoning population, domestic capital for investment, and purchase of Soviet-supplied technology, capital equipment, and military hardware. To satisfy these needs, the government began to collectivize agriculture. Despite internal disagreement as to the speed of collectivization, which at least for the time being was resolved in Mao's favor, preliminary collectivization was 90 percent completed by the end of 1956. In addition, the government nationalized banking, industry, and trade. Private enterprise in mainland China was virtually abolished.
Major political developments included the centralization of party and government administration. Elections were held in 1953 for delegates to the First National People's Congress, China's national legislature, which met in 1954. The congress promulgated the state constitution of 1954 and formally elected Mao chairman (or president) of the People's Republic; it elected Liu Shaoqi (1898-1969) chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and named Zhou Enlai premier of the new State Council. In the midst of these major governmental changes, and helping to precipitate them, was a power struggle within the CCP leading to the 1954 purge of Political Bureau member Gao Gang and Party Organization Department head Rao Shushi, who were accused of illicitly trying to seize control of the party.
The process of national integration also was characterized by improvements in party organization under the administrative direction of the secretary general of the party, Deng Xiaoping (who served concurrently as vice premier of the State Council). There was a marked emphasis on recruiting intellectuals, who by 1956 constituted nearly 12 percent of the party's 10.8 million members. Peasant membership had decreased to 69 percent, while there was an increasing number of "experts", who were needed for the party and governmental infrastructures, in the party ranks.
As part of the effort to encourage the participation of intellectuals in the new regime, in mid- 1956 there began an official effort to liberalize the political climate. Cultural and intellectual figures were encouraged to speak their minds on the state of CCP rule and programs. Mao personally took the lead in the movement, which was launched under the classical slogan "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let the hundred schools of thought contend." At first the party's repeated invitation to air constructive views freely and openly was met with caution. By mid- 1957, however, the movement unexpectedly mounted, bringing denunciation and criticism against the party in general and the excesses of its cadres in particular. Startled and embarrassed, leaders turned on the critics as "bourgeois rightists" and launched the Anti- Rightist Campaign. The Hundred Flowers Campaign sometimes called the Double Hundred Campaign, apparently had a sobering effect on the CCP leadership.
The anti-rightist drive was followed by a militant approach toward economic development. In 1958 the CCP launched the Great Leap Forward campaign under the new "General Line for Socialist Construction." The Great Leap Forward was aimed at accomplishing the economic and technical development of the country at a vastly faster pace and with greater results. The shift to the left that the new "General Line" represented was brought on by a combination of domestic and external factors.
Although the party leaders appeared generally satisfied with the accomplishments of the First Five-Year Plan, they — Mao and his fellow radicals in particular — believed that more could be achieved in the Second Five-Year Plan (1958-62) if the people could be ideologically aroused and if domestic resources could be utilized more efficiently for the simultaneous development of industry and agriculture.
These assumptions led the party to an intensified mobilization of the peasantry and mass organizations, stepped-up ideological guidance and indoctrination of technical experts, and efforts to build a more responsive political system. The last of these undertakings was to be accomplished through a new xiafang (down to the countryside) movement, under which cadres inside and outside the party would be sent to factories, communes, mines, and public works projects for manual labor and firsthand familiarization with grass-roots conditions. Although evidence is sketchy, Mao's decision to embark on the Great Leap Forward was based in part on his uncertainty about the Soviet policy of economic, financial, and technical assistance to China. That policy, in Mao's view, not only fell far short of his expectations and needs but also made him wary of the political and economic dependence in which China might find itself.
The urban economy, which had grown rapidly as a result of the proindustry policies of the Government, has not been able to provide employment for the growing urban labor force. This had been one of the most intractable problems confronting the regime. During the first 3 years following the establishment of Communist rule in 1949, non-agricultural employment grew at an average rate of 12 percent per year. This rate proved, however, to be too high to be sustained over a longer period of time.
The First Five-Year Plan proved to be especially ineffective on this score. During the years 1953-57, the growth rate in urban employment reached an average of only 1.5 percent per year. While some increases in employment resulted from the large investment made in the state sector of the economy, these were in part offset by losses in the declining private sector of the economy. Enterprises owned by private interests were either subjected to socialization or allowed to fall into a state of neglect during the years 1954-56.
A sharp upward spurt took place in 1958, when nonagricultural employment expanded by as much as 43 percent in the wake of the Great Leap Forward. Governent policy had, quite clearly shifted in favor of a revolutionary tempo" of economic development, calling for large inputs of unskilled labor. In the near collapse that followed, the policies and goals of the Second Five-Year Plan were abandoned. Such industrial growth as did take place after the retreat from the Great Leap has been limited for the most part to the petroleum industry, the production of agricultural machinery, chemical fertilizer, and the manufacture of weapons.
Given the brief span of time involved, the record of economic achievement during China's First Five-Year Plan appeared to be quite good in the opinion of most outside economic observers. But not, it would seem, in the view of the political leaders of China. Their ambitions, domestic and international, coupled with their confidence in their ability to stimulate the revolutionary enthusiasm of the new elite, led them to adjudge the growth pattern of the 1952-57 period as unsatisfactory.
What followed was the Great Leap Forward. Levels of production were scheduled to increase in 1 year by 100 percent throughout the economy.
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